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One issue I have with Quickposes: the figures lack context. My animals sketches are mostly done from video footage, and I find it helps me to understand how the animals move, and to make more lively sketches. Or that's my guess, anyway. So I downloaded footage of a ballet dancer from YouTube to use in the same way: pause the video every second or two and make a quick sketch. I had never realized before just how graceful ballet dancers are! Couldn't really do him justice, though, but it's good practice, and I find it way more satisfying than working from the still images at Quickposes:

And so, after seemingly endless drama with dental work, it turned out the tooth couldn't be saved and had to be extracted after all. Well, now at least I am rid of the fucking thing and life can go on.

Really good work here, i can see some nice improvements, more confident, cleaner linework and shading, your understanding of forms and proportions... keep it up! You should try to explore your imagination every now and then though as this is where your understanding of forms can be further developed.

The Following User Says Thank You to copaloro For This Useful Post:

Really good work here, i can see some nice improvements, more confident, cleaner linework and shading, your understanding of forms and proportions... keep it up! You should try to explore your imagination every now and then though as this is where your understanding of forms can be further developed.

Thanks for the kind words. As you can see, it's been a while since i posted anything; i have been very busy with other matters. will hopefully get back to it next. I have always been reluctant to try drawing from imagination, because I suck at it! But will give it a try in due course. :-)

Awesome sketchbook already! Great kind of practice, you're studying exactly the right things for good results and to lay a good foundation to build other skills on top of later on. Your figures are definitely improving, I like the note you made about watching videos and how the context of the pose helps explain it, never thought of it that way but is very true. What could help your figures a lot and also yourself, is to draw a ground plane that the figure is standing on and to draw "wrapping lines". So draw cylinders to indicate what body parts are coming towards the viewer, and which are going away from us. This was one of the best methods for me personally to better understand the 3dimensionality of the figure and the space it moves in. Really like all the animal studies, maybe try to see if you can draw one from imagination after you've done a few from reference and see where you still need to pay better attention. All in all this looks very promising and with hard work you'll definitely get there, I'm sure this sketchbook will turn into one of those you speak of in your first post

The Following User Says Thank You to Dennis van Kessel For This Useful Post:

Awesome sketchbook already! Great kind of practice, you're studying exactly the right things for good results and to lay a good foundation to build other skills on top of later on. Your figures are definitely improving, I like the note you made about watching videos and how the context of the pose helps explain it, never thought of it that way but is very true. What could help your figures a lot and also yourself, is to draw a ground plane that the figure is standing on and to draw "wrapping lines". So draw cylinders to indicate what body parts are coming towards the viewer, and which are going away from us. This was one of the best methods for me personally to better understand the 3dimensionality of the figure and the space it moves in. Really like all the animal studies, maybe try to see if you can draw one from imagination after you've done a few from reference and see where you still need to pay better attention. All in all this looks very promising and with hard work you'll definitely get there, I'm sure this sketchbook will turn into one of those you speak of in your first post

Thanks for the kind words and input - all very good advice. I am in general terrified of trying to work from imagination, but I suppose I should plunge into it sooner or later. :-)

I have been studying the YouTube videos of a bloke named Sycra. He greatly simplifies the anatomy, and for the moment, I feel his way of doping it is more approachable. Proko is much more complete. But that's the problem: I feel completely overwhelmed by detail, and all his best stuff is hidden behind a pay wall. So for the moment the plan is to study Sycra's simplified anatomy and see how far it can get me, and then, if necessary, use it as springboard for more advanced stuff.

Made a few sketches while watching his vids. These don't look like much, but I have actually learned a very great deal in the process:

At least a few moments for sketching again. It is most annoying; every time it takes me a few days just to get into it again, and then life interferes again. But let's see how it goes this time. Again, from my footage of a ballet dancer:

Some random doodles from imagination, which neatly illustrate why I am so reluctant to work from imagination: I suck at it. Of course, that means I should do more of it rather than less! :-)

And some partially from reference. I tried to draw the buildings from a different perspective than the one I saw in the reference, and tried slightly cartoonifying some of the figures. I find that at the moment, doing this sort of not-so-serious exercise is useful to keep me at it...

I have been trying to draw clothed figures. I find it very challenging, because it is vastly more difficult to try visualizing the mannequin figure inside the clothes. In the past I just conceived of the reference as a flat, 2-D figure, consisting of interlocking shapes, and drew it by simply doing one shape at a time. It works to do it that way, and in fact I often achieved more accuracy that way. But it is also a way that will probably never teach one to draw the figure from imagination; for that, you have to have a 3-D map of the figure in your head.

And thus, I now try to always start with a gestural mannequin figure, and then flesh it out and add clothing. At least for the moment, it makes for very awkward drawings, but I think in the longer term it is probably a better way to go about it.

I then tried a different exercise: first sketch the figure from reference, then try to imagine it seen from a different angle and sketching it as seen from that angle. Yikes! I'm not sure I achieved anything more here than to demonstrate to myself just how little I know about drawing figures...

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youre doing great and imo just the right things. some of your gesture drawings are really good.

one thing i wonder about is the hairy lines lately.

I have wondered about that myself, but it turns out it's simple: I have been using ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil for some of these sketches. They both make much thinner lines, and thus tend to go all hairy. I think I'll return to a normal pencil, with a somewhat blunt point. :-)